Former Formula 1 driver Karun Chandhok questioned Scuderia Ferrari’s decision to depart with its team principal Mattia Binotto at the end of the 2022 Formula 1 season, using a football reference in regards to managers being sacked too easily at times.
Scuderia Ferrari had high hopes in the start of the 2022 Formula 1 championship, with the F1-75 being able to challenge Red Bull in the first races, as Charles Leclerc secured two race wins in Bahrain and Australia. However a situation that seemed so promising early on quickly went downhill due to a series of strategical, driver errors and most importantly power unit reliability problems, marking a decline that led to Scuderia Ferrari ending the season with a car clearly slower than the Red Bull RB18 in terms of race pace.
This allowed Max Verstappen to easily win the Drivers’ championship with a huge gap of 146 points ahead of Charles Leclerc, as the Maranello team finished the season more than 200 points behind Red Bull in the Constructors’ standings, which led to Mattia Binotto handing in his resignation. The Italian manager will leave Ferrari after almost three decades, while former Alfa Romeo boss Frédéric Vasseur will take charge of the Ferrari Formula 1 Racing Division.
Yet taking into consideration the fact that the Maranello team’s problems were mainly related to reliability and race operations, Karun Chandhok does not believe that Mattia Binotto being replaced could be a solution to Ferrari’s issues:
“Personally, I don’t necessarily think that’s the answer,” Karun Chandhok said for Sky Sports F1 – “It feels a bit sort of football manager-esque. There were issues on the operational side. If you look at it from a technical standpoint, in terms of R&D [research and development] and design, they produced a very fast car, they are the fastest car over one lap this year. But operationally, reliability wise, they have issues. And I don’t think just changing the person at the top is necessarily the answer.”
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An important change to the Italian culture that Mattia Binotto attempted to introduce in the 2022 Formula 1 season was to make it one of no-blame, as he felt the best solution is to move on from the days of finger pointing. However many times this approach did not pay off, with Mattia Binotto denying for much of the year that the Maranello team had an issue with its strategy department, when quite clearly they did.
British television broadcaster for Sky Sports David Croft feels that Mattia Binotto paid the price for wanting to continue with that no-blame culture, rather than Scuderia Ferrari’s perceived underachievement given the potential of the F1-75 challenger:
“I was thinking about this, did Mattia Binotto pay the price for a season of over-expectation for Ferrari?. But no, is the answer to that, as you say they have engineered the fastest car. Did he pay the price for trying to protect the staff at Maranello from the intense scrutiny and any public blame? Yes, I think he did. It’s interesting. Toto Wolff creates a culture of no blame at Mercedes. Mattia Binotto tries to do the same thing at Ferrari, one is fêted for that and the other has to resign.” – David Croft explained.
Indian racing driver Karun Chadhok explained that in fact such an approach cannot be efficient if there are issues which have to be solved, feeling that Mattia Binotto was guilty of being too protective of his colleagues at Maranello.
“There’s a difference though,” Karun Chandhok replied in response to David Croft’s comments – “Because there’s one thing about creating a no-blame culture, however, if somebody is not performing and in their case, for example, the strategy team wasn’t, you have to make changes. And I think Mattia perhaps leans too much towards protecting the people and not sacking people mid-season, and maybe hesitated in making the changes that were required.” – he explained.
The television presenter who last competed in Formula E for Mahindra Racing believes that the drivers should also be partially responsible for some of the poor strategy decisions made by the Maranello pit wall, pointing out that it was Charles Leclerc who most of the times suffered when “blindly” accepting the calls, while his teammate Carlos Sainz more often tried to argue Ferrari’s decisions:
“We can go back and count six strategic errors across the season and actually, they were all on the Leclerc side. Silverstone, Monaco, Brazil, where they asked Carlos to do certain things, and he said ‘what are you talking about? No, I’m going refuse’, whereas Charles, sort of blindly went with what the team did. So there has to be a certain amount of emphasis put on the driver as well in those decisions. For me, the turning point in Ferrari’s campaign was Baku. They arrived in Baku, Leclerc eight points behind Max. That’s, if he gets a win and the fastest lap, they are equal. They had a DNF, grid penalty for the next race in Canada, they left Montreal eight days later 49 points behind, to me that eight-day period turned the Championship.” – Karun Chandhok concluded.
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